More than a hundred scholars, lawyers and activists, including dissidents Liu Di and Gao Yu, have signed a letter asking China’s legislature and highest court to define “subversion.”

The letter, which will be submitted March 1 to the National People’s Congress and the Supreme Court, said current subversion law was “unclear and limits the people’s right to speech and freedom,” according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

“The definition and logic behind the laws are vague and makes room for abuse of the law,” the center said, citing the letter.

China’s communist government usually applies subversion laws to people pushing for political reform by signing petitions, posting Internet articles, distributing fliers or participating in demonstrations.

The letter came days after Amnesty International reported a “dramatic rise” in the number of people jailed in China for expressing opinions on the Internet.

That Amnesty International report has picked up amazing momentum and has breathed new life into the Great Firewall of China story. But is there any reason to feel that the report and the letter and the renewed worldwide interest will make any difference? Probably not. From the same article:

An open letter circulated before the Communist Party congress in November 2002 resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of at least six activists. The letter, signed by 192 people, appealed to delegates to release political prisoners, hold direct elections and make other reforms.

Cheers to the 103 signers, each of whom knows he or she may be carted off to prison for the sin of asking their government to explain itself.

And here’s more proof:

Four farmers who appealed in Beijing against corruption and ill treatment have instead found themselves charged with disclosing state secrets and face up to five years in prison.
The farmers were evicted from their land, which was part of the area to be submerged in the controversial Three Gorges Dam project. They claimed that they were the victims of unreasonable treatment and corruption by the building authorities, yet the authorities have denied their claims and the four now face charges of their own.

According to reports from the South China Morning Post, two international human rights organizations, Probe International and Human Rights Watch, asked the Chinese government to release the four detained farmers. They also called for support from the countries assisting with the dam construction and from the World Bank Group to ask Beijing to release the detainees. The two human rights organizations have started an open investigation into the claims that officials abused their authority and mistreated the residents.

An official from Human Rights Watch pointed out that this incident is similar to the case of the recent arrest of a scholar who exposed corruption in the local government. The official added that corruption in China is widespread, but due to a lack of freedom of speech and an independent judicial system, anyone who tries to expose the corruption runs a huge risk of facing trumped-up charges that will see them imprisoned for a long time.

Kind of speaks for itself, don’t you think? Keep those reforms coming.

Sounds very ugly.

North Korea has killed political prisoners in gas chambers designed to test chemical weapons, according to an investigative documentary broadcast by Britain’s BBC television yesterday.

A former North Korean prison officer described how entire families were put to death inside a glass chamber, as government scientists watched. The allegations were supported by what the BBC programme said were official North Korean documents confirming how prisoners were used to test chemical and biological weapons.

“I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,” said the former officer. “The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.”

The documentary, titled Access to Evil, represented arguably the most serious allegation of human rights abuses levelled against the secretive Communist state, which George W. Bush, US president, once named as part of an “axis of evil”.

The reporter couldn’t get anyone from the DPRK to comment, but notes that in the past they have denied reports of human rights abuses. I guess we can all relax now.

Just when you thought the story couldn’t get any sicker, along comes this.

Here’s a little snippet of their email conversation:

VICTIM: “What will you do with my brain?”

CANNIBAL: “I’ll leave it, I don’t want to split your skull.”

VICTIM: “Better bury it, preferably in a cemetery; nobody notices skulls there. Or maybe pulverise it?”

CANNIBAL: “We have a nice small cemetery here.”

VICTIM: “You could use it as an ashtray.”

And it gets worse.

In case you haven’t met your quota this week of depressing sories of man-made human suffering in China and the lunacies of Mao that are still inflicting grief on thousands today, there is always this article to turn to. Read it and weep.

(I read the last few paragraphs again a minute ago, and couldn’t help but think that the US, for all its sins, still has a lot going for it.)

Being half-way around the world, I had only heard rumbles over Mel Gibson’s controversial (to say the least) new movie The Passion. I read how the film’s publicist tried to make it seem like the Vatican had “endorsed” it, and how the Jewish community was up in arms over its alleged antisemitism.

And then just now, by chance, I wandered over to a monumental new post at Dave Neiwert’s superlative blog (the kind mine would be if I didn’t have to work). I am totally blown away. I mean, there is enough shocking material in this post to write a frigging book.

I am not even going to try to restate what Orcinus does so beautifully. I just have to ask, is all this stuff out in public? Did you know that Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, is a vicious Holocaust denier who has addressed revisionist history conferences? Did you know we are only seeing positive pre-publicity of the movie because all those attending the pre-screenings had to sign an agreement pledging not to criticize the movie?

It’s a long post, but so rich in content, replete with so many specific examples of the sins committed in the creation and marketing of this moviecanard — as I said, I am in shock. It sounds like a mega-scandal just waiting to explode.

The close to this epic post:

Mel Gibson should be concerned about the reaction to his film, because it is clear that it is not simply a piece of art — it is, like The Birth of the Nation, a piece of hateful propaganda posing as art. It is a piece of poison that very well could contaminate the social well of interfaith relations for generations to come, particularly if mainstream Christians decide to pick it up, defend it and actively promote it, as it is clear they are doing so far.

Read the whole thing. There’s so much stuff there, I want to know how he researched it all. Whatever you do, do not miss the excerpt of Hutton Gibson’s interview with a NY Times Magazine reporter. My God.

Back in December, danwei linked to a site called ShangHai Eye, but for some inexplicable reason I failed to head over there to check it out. That all changed today, and it’s now going to be one of my regular stops. Anyone interested in news in China, and the journalists there and abroad who report about it, will have a field day there. I blogrolled it 5 minutes after discovering it.

(I discovered it after ShangHai Eye left a brilliant comment to my new post over at Living in China.)

Another new addition today is the most excellent news/culture site EastSouthWestNorth, found via Brainysmurf. Blogrolled today as well. Unusual, to discover two superlative China-related sites in one day.

I have just put up a little piece over at Living in China on the blatant hypocrisy of big US tech firms like Microsoft and Cisco that provide the tools for China’s infamous Internet censorship and persecution, and then shrug their shoulders and say, “That’s not our problem.” Bill Gates in particular comes off looking like a weasel (which he is).

P.S. I see it’s a bit difficult to differentiate the hyperlinks from the text over at LiC — if you squint carefully, you’ll see the hyperlinks are charcoal grey, a touch lighter than the body copy.